And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Ifill the challenge of gun violence, and the looming political fight over what to do about it, dominated a high profile hearing today. The Senate Judiciary committee played host to leading voices from both sides of the debate. It was a day of drama in the packed hearing room. This is an important conversation. Ifill even before the senators had their say, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords stepped up to the microphone to make a brief and halting plea. Speaking is difficult but i need to Say Something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. You must act. Be bold, be courageous. Americans are counting on you. Ifill giffords was shot in the head two years ago as she met with constituents in tucson, arizona. Six others were killed that day. Giffords and her husband, former astronaut mark kelly have now launched their own campaign for tougher gun laws. Capitalizing on the public outcry that followed decembers mass shooting at an Elementary School in newtown, connecticut. After 20 kids and six of their teachers were gunned down in their classrooms at sandy hook, we said, this time must be different. Something needs to be done. We are simply two reasonable americans who have said enough. Ifill but at todays hearings, National RifleAssociation Vice president Wayne Lapierre pushed back insisting that the real solution to gun violence is to enforce existing laws. Unfortunately, weve seen a dramatic collapse in federal gun prosecutions in recent years. Overall in 2011, federal weapons prosecutions per capita were down 35 from their peak in the previous administration. That means violent felons, gang members and the mentally ill who possess firearms are not being prosecuted. And thats unacceptable. Proposing more gun control laws, while failing to enforce the thousands we already have is not a serious solution to reducing crime. Ifill several Committee Republicans endorsed that argument. I would call on president obama to call in attorney general eric holder and ask him why the prosecutions have dropped dramatically across all categories of federal gun laws. I have a hard time telling my constituents in texas that congress is looking at passing a whole raft of new laws when the laws that we currently are so woefully unenforced. Ifill Committee Chairman patrick leahy, a democrat, challenged lapierre on whether the n. R. A. Supports limiting gun sales in any fashion. Now, in your testimony in 99, you supported mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. You said, quote, no loopholes anywhere for anyone. Now, today, of course, you said criminals would never submit to background checks. Statistics show that many do. Nearly two million convicted criminals and other dangerous people trying to buy a firearm since 94, as Chief Johnson said, were prevented. So let me ask you this do you still, as you did in 1999, still support mandatory background checks at gun shows, yes or no . Senator, i do not believe the way the law is working now, unfortunately, that it does any good to extend the law to private sales between hobbyists and collectors. Okay, so you do not support mandatory background checks in all instances at gun shows. We do not because the fact is the law right now is a failure the way its working. The fact is that you have 76,000some people that have been denied under the present law. Only 44 were prosecuted. Youre letting them go. Theyre walking the streets. Ifill under continued questioning, lapierre argued that background checks are a burden only on the lawabiding. Lets be honest, background checks will never be universal because criminals will never submit to them. Ifill illinois democrat Richard Durbin vigorously disagreed. Mr. Lapierre, thats the point. The criminals wont go to purchase the guns, because there will be a background check. Well stop them from the original purchase. You missed that point completely. Ifill durbin pointed to chicago, where there have been 42 homicides just this month, the most violent month since 2002. The latest victim 15yearold hadiya pendleton, who marched with her High School Band at the president s inaugural parade just last week, was killed yesterday. I also want to say a word she attended the University Prep school in chicago. She was an honors student and a majorette, and she marched in the inaugural parade last week here in chicago. It was the highlight of her young 15yearold life. Yesterday in a rainstorm after school, she raced to a shelter. A gunman came in and shot her dead. Just a matter of days after the happiest day of her life, shes gone. We are awash in guns. The confiscation of guns per capita in chicago is six times the number of new york city. We have guns everywhere. And some believe the solution to this is more guns. I disagree. Ifill there was at least tentative agreement on the need for Greater Mental Health care to head off wouldbe killers. Mark kelly cited jared loughner, his wifes attacker, as an example. The killer in the tucson shooting suffered from severe Mental Illness. Even after being deemed unqualified for service in the army and expulsion from Pima Community college he was never reported to Mental Health authorities. On november 30, 2010, he walked into a Sporting Goods store, passed a background check, and walked out with a semiautomatic handgun. He had never been legally adjudicated as mentally ill, and, even if he had, arizona at the time had over 121,000 records of disqualifying Mental Illness that it had not submitted into the system. Ifill in turn, the n. R. A. s lapierre said its the system thats broken. We need to look at the full range of Mental Health issues, from Early Detection and treatment, to civil commitment laws, to privacy laws that needlessly prevent Mental Health records from being included in the National Instant criminal background check system. Lawabiding gun owners will not accept blame for the acts of violent or deranged criminals. Nor do we believe the government should dictate what we can lawfully own and use to protect our families. Ifill the president and some Senate Democrats are pushing for bans on assaultstyle weapons and curbs on highcapacity ammunition magazines. And as the politicians debated in washington today, three people were wounded at another shooting in arizona this one at a Phoenix Office complex. Brown weve collected all of our reporting on the gun debate. Youll find that on our website. And still to come on the newshour the mixed economic numbers; israeli airstrikes inside syria; real world lessons in the classroom and a chinese dissident who escaped house arrest. But first, the other news of the day. Heres kwame holman. Holman john kerry gave his a rare storm blasted into the southeast killing two people. In georgia, an enormous funnel cloud struck cartersville and downtown adairsville 60 miles northwest of atlanta. It tore up homes, heavily damaged a large factory and flipped big trucks on their sides. Another tornado did damage in mount juliet, tennessee. The storms rupted as a large warm air mass out of the gulf collidecollided with an incomind front. John kerry gave his Farewell Speech on the floor of the u. S. Senate today. The veteran democrat is leaving, after 27 years, to become secretary of state. Today, kerry looked back on his public career, starting with his service in vietnam and as a leading antiwar figure. In the senate, he focused on foreign policy, and was his partys nominee for president in 2004. Eight years ago, i admit i had a slightly different plan to leave the senate. But 61 million americans voted they want me to stay with you. Staying here, i learned about humility, and i learned sometimes the greatest lesson comes not from victory, but from dusting yourself off. Holman in boston today, the governor of massachusetts tapped William Mo Cowan a former aide to the governor as interim senator. Cowan will become the second black member of this senate. Cowan said he has no plans to run in the june special election to fill the remaining 18 months of kerrys term. Donor countries pledged more than 1. 5 billion today, in humanitarian aid for syria. About a billion of the total will go to help neighboring countries who are hosting refugees. The rest will go to aid syrians displaced inside their country. At the conference in kuwait, u. N. Secretarygeneral ban ki moon appealed to all sides, especially syrian president bashar assad. More than 60,000 people have been killed during last 22 months. Personally i am pained to think how many more people may have to be killed in the coming days and weeks and months if we do not bring this situation to an end, urgently. Holman its estimated two Million People inside syria need food, shelter and other aid this winter. More than 700,000 others have fled to neighboring countries. Holman the Federal Reserve today said Economic Growth in the u. S. Hit pause in recent months. In a statement, the central bank blamed bad weather and cuts in defense spending. It did not announce any new action to stimulate the economy. Wall street reacted by giving up some of its recent gains. The Dow Jones Industrial average lost 44 points to close at 13,910. The nasdaq fell 11 points to close at 3,142. Those are some of the days major stories. Now, back to jeff. Brown whither the economy . Thats been the question for quite a while now. Today, there was a surprising and perhaps confusing new twist. The Commerce Department reported that Gross Domestic Product actually shrank in the last quarter of 2012. The drop was small, one tenth of a percent. But it was still the first time economic output had fallen in three and a half years. Government spending dropped, most dramatically in the defense sector. The report, though, also contained some positive developments Consumer Spending and Business Investment were both up. And yesterday, the socalled caseshiller index found that housing prices grew in 20 major cities by an average of 5. 5 over the previous year. It was the biggest gain in six years. We talk it through, with joel naroff, an economist, who heads his own Consulting Firm in pennsylvania. And roben farzad, a Senior Writer with bloomberg businessweek. Joel naroff, let me start with you. This was a surprise to most people. Whats behind the krpgs last quarter . Well, it was largely the governments doing between the largest cutback of 40 years in defense which took well over a percentage point of growth out and the fears of falling off the fiscal cliff which caused businesses to be really, really cautious in their inventories and they failed dramatically, taking another percentage point or more out. Those were the basic reasons. But, you know, as was noted, when you look at the fundamentals and details of whats going on in businesses and households and housing, those are all solid. I think that really says this economy has Forward Momentum despite what the numbers seem to indicate. Brown i want to come back to momentum. But the first two points you made, first about government cuts, weve heard a lot about that but companies restocking at a slower rate, whats behind that . What does that tell you . Well, i think really what happened was that businesses were really cautious. Uncertain about whether or not wed wind up going off the fiscal cliff. And they made some very shortterm decisions. Its easy just to keep the warehouses essentially empty if we dont go off the cliff they can refill them quickly so i think what happened during the end of the year was they just ran things very, very close to the vest and now i think well see in the first part of this year that theyll have to rebuild it and that will add to growth. Brown robin farzad, this was referred to as a pause in the economy. What do you see . The Federal Reserve has its foot on the gas, the pedal to the metal targeting unemployment with inflation so benign. After all, unemployment is still perilously close to 8 . Its been above 7. 5 for the longest stretch in the postworld war ii period and the Federal Reserve realize there is so much slack in the system its going to keep going out there, keep rates at painfully low levels to support homeowners, people who want to take out mortgages, obviously corporations that can borrow at record low levels are loving this and and, oh, by the way, the stock market is at near record levels. I dont think many people on the street would appreciate that, but when and if they do remember their 401 k log ins and go in there, theyre bound to have a positive wealth effect. Brown tell us, robin, on that there have been report that small investors have been getting back into the market a little bit more confident, i guess. Is that the case and what does that tell you . Its a paradox in that small investors i think for the past three years have cashed out of stock mutual funds to the tune of 300 billion. Now, mind you, this was a threeyear period that saw the stock market double. So its more evidence of that rather tragic buy high sell low behavior that i think mom and pop investors have shown for many decades. And now theyre realizing, many of them, that theyre going to need the money for retirement, yields on savings, on bonds are so low that they have to go out there and get some more scratch, essentially into retirement. And its not just retirement. Its their children, its throwing everything into question, this great economic calamity. If you thought you were retiring at 65, maybe you have to push it back to 70. Are you going to have enough disposable income . Are you going to have to downsize out of your home . I think the Federal Reserve is still mindful of that and wants to be as accommodative as possible for as long as possible. Brown joel naroff, coming back to the signs you were seeing of potential growth, the market, other factors, address the consumer issue and the confidence issue. What signs do you see . Well, theres actually two opposite things thats going on. Theyre saying that theyre losing confidence. The recent confidence numbers were down fairly sharply. At the same time, almost all the data thats related to Consumer Spending whether its retail sales, vehicle sales, Housing Market which is really an indication of Consumer Confidence are all going strongly. So i think if you look at what theyre doing not what theyre saying the consumers are still voting with their dollars that things are going to get better. Now that taxes are increased, weve got to see how theyre reacting to that, but up until this point, almost everything pointed to stronger Consumer Spending and that i take as a positive sign. Brown what about just filling in a little bit more on the housing sector because those numbers came out yesterday, they look good, they were interpreted as very positive. But i note that even Robert Shiller himself sort of suggested that he cant read all that much into them. How important is that sector . Well, to me i think housing is critically important, not simply because of whole construction which obviously powers an awful lot of jobs but when you consider all the people who have been underwater for so long and they have this negative wealth effect, we talked about the fact that 401 k s are going up. If they see house prices going up they feel an awful lot better as well. So i think this strength in the housing prices are really the most important factor out there and its spread really across the country. Not quite as strong as whats going on in some of the areas that collapsed like phoenix or las vegas but really any price increase that were seeing, 3 , 4 , 5 in areas brings more and more people above water, they feel better, they can start making the moves they wanted to do and that helps the economy. Brown you know, robin farzad, we started this conversation with defense cuts hitting the g. D. P. In the last quarter. We now face the possibility, real possibility, of more defense cuts and very big domestic cuts. Thats clearly a factor in anybodys thinking for forecasting the economy going forward, i assume. Thats true and, jeff, frankly, ive stopped calling it the fiscal cliff. I got so tired. Im calling it the budgetary butte, with your permission. It became so cliche into that final quarter of the year and you saw the market largely shrugged it off. Brown a butte is more picturesque than the cliff, but go ahead. Yes. Yes, indeed. So i feel that investors at least are not bothered about this. They see this as a game of chicken going up and down pennsylvania between the white house and congress. And much of this has been kicked down the road effectively for a couple of months. We do know that we have an unsustainable budget deficit situation but on the flip side you have economists like paul krugman out there saying do not worry about the budget deficit, this is not the time to be slashing public spending. As you saw, that actually helped push that economy into decline in the final quarter. That was a big variable in that. So this is a huge debate. But on balance what youre seeing is a lot of the unexpected has surprised the positive. You mentioned housing, housing is not just virtuous in that it